Vote Christian For The Pirate Party EU Ballot – Here's Why

For once, an internal Pirate Party matter: if you’re a member of the Swedish Pirate Party and want to see me keep doing what I do, there’s something you need to do today (or November 6 at the latest). You need to vote for Christian Engström for the top position of the Pirate Party’s Europarl ballot. The reason is simple: between him and the other candidate for the ballot’s top position, Christian is the only one funding my keynoting and evangelizing. So if you want me to keep doing what I do, you need to vote, and you need to vote for Christian at the top.

Hi – today I have an internal matter for all people who are members of the Swedish Pirate Party and who appreciate my worldwide evangelizing.

The Swedish Pirate Party has two excellent candidates for the top spot on the EU ballot for next year’s European elections: Christian Engström and Amelia Andersdotter. They are quite different as individuals, and both have strong points. However, only one of them funds my keynoting, writing, and evangelizing that gives ripples worlwide, and that’s Christian Engström. So all else being equal, if you appreciate what I do and want me to continue doing so, you need to vote for the ballot proposals topped by Christian Engström.

The takeaway is straightforward: If you want me to keep spending all my energy traveling and talking about the pirate ideas and ideals in a way that is exceptionally rewarded and recognized (“Top Global Thinker”, “100 Most Influential People”, etc.), you need to vote for a ballot where Christian tops the Pirate Party Europarl ballot above Amelia, in anticipation of the quite real possibility that we only keep one of our two seats in the European Parliament in next year’s European elections. And you need to vote in the internal elections, today and possibly (but not necessarily) up to twice more.

If you’ve voted in an internal election before, it takes two minutes tops to place your four necessary votes. (If you haven’t voted before and need to register, it may take some five to ten minutes.) You need to go to this page, where there are four different cup-style elimination votes going on. In each of those elimination votes, a proposed ballot with Christian at the top is facing off against another ballot. You need to mark each of the four lists that is topped by Christian and vote for it, that is, the lists marked C01-Y04, C01-Y03, C01-Y06, and C01-Y01. Don’t forget to press “Vote” (rösta) after you’ve marked each ballot topped by Christian.

This takes two minutes or your time, and is your cost of making certain I’ll keep evangelizing freedoms of speech, expression, opinion, and the press for the next five years too. (Obviously, it assumes that the party also gets at least one seat, but that’s the next battle to fight.)

If you haven’t voted in Swedish Pirate Party meetings before, Christian’s blog has more elaborate instructions.

UPDATE – I can’t believe I have to point this out, but here goes: I obviously think Christian is the stronger candidate of the two by far, beside the point above, and I think both the party and the movement needs him in the top spot. However, I also recognize that a few people value the candidates fairly evenly, and I want to supply the above as a mere fact on the table for those who consider all things equal. (There have been a lot of people outside of the party that wanted to have strong opinions in the party’s internal elections, especially a few very vocal people who wanted the other candidate and who went into pretty much a nuanceless all-out rage when I advocated Christian – which I do for numerous good reasons, and far from only because he’s technically my employer, making it possible for me to travel and speak like I do. As I said, I can’t believe it’s necessary for me to point this out.)

…AND RESULTS ARE IN
As of 22:00 on November 6, the results are in, and Christian Engström tops all four non-eliminated candidate ballots. This means that he’s going to top the final ballot for Piratpartiet Sweden to the European Parliament next year. Congrats!

Rick Falkvinge

Rick is the founder of the first Pirate Party and a low-altitude motorcycle pilot. He works as Head of Privacy at the no-log VPN provider Private Internet Access; with his other 40 hours, he's developing an enterprise grade bitcoin wallet and HR system for activism.

Discussion

Ok, this was apparently the first blog article ever where I needed to close the comment field. A number of people rooting for the other candidate were screaming-out-loud insulting and rude in their comments (and therefore had their comments removed as per the comment policy) – “shame on you”, “we don’t need you”, et cetera. That is not acceptable behavior here.

Sad to see, really. (And no, maintaining a comment field is not censorship. The difference is crucial – censorship is when the government decides what gets posted on my blog, not when I do so on my own blog.)

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